Transcript of March 21 Interview with

Catharine MacKinnon

Edited for readability

Nickname - Message

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 14:54) Welcome to a live interview with Catharine MacKinnon!
The first few questions will be posed by Prof. Rosenfeld. Feel free to comment
after each question and answer. If you would like to ask Catharine MacKinnon
a question, please email it to mbaily@law.harvard.edu

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 14:55) By way of introduction, Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon
is the foremother of feminist legal theory. Her first book, The Sexual Harassment
of Working Women, was published in 1979. She made sexual harassment from
a legal theory to address a problem of sex discrimination previously unrecognized--into
a legal entitlement that women now have when we enter the workplace. In
all areas of women's rights, she has been an undaunted, articulate, powerful
and controversial force to be reckoned with. She has done more for women's
rights than any other living person, in my opinion, and she is, by my lights,
the most brilliant person alive. I am honoted to have her here today. So
let's all welcome Professor MacKinnon!

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 14:58) For the first question, how do you think the web can
be used as a tool, educational, instructive and of course, collaboratively,
to influence change in the notions of women's equality?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 14:58) The web can break down women's isolation and make
connections possible, which has tremendous organizing potential for a group
that is in many respects so segregated as well as so huge. There is no substitute
for what happens in face-to-face contact though. This is more how it can
help effectuate equality than change notions of it. I'd be interested in
your thoughts about what different notion of equality the web might promote
-- it seems to me a very democratic instrument, or potentially so, and democracy
is the old equality idea. I'm pretty excited about the idea of voting online,
and think it might well boost women's participation even more than men's,
given the restrictions on women's lives. Whatever voting can do, that would
help. If women ever got, in real life, to the edge of existing notions of
equality, we'd be in good shape to create new ones.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:04) You're right, the internet does have enormous potential
for creating democratic fora and for connecting people. This cybercourse
has been a good example of that -- at the end of it, we'll all have over
300 other contacts around the world of people who care about stopping violence
against women.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:05) Question : Should Internet regulations focus on intimidating
or threatening behavior in general or is there something special about the
threat of a man against a woman? Should the internet regulate all intimidating
speech? Where should we draw the line?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 15:06) I don't see how the net raises any different questions
about threats or intimidation than any other medium does. Threats by men
against women are realistic in any medium. Nothing about the net much changes
it, does it? Do you think existing law on these subjects is inadequate to
the net, or that it should be exempted from them? If existing law were taken
as "the line," we could talk further about where it falls short,
or overreaches, in your view and mine, on or offline.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:08) I think that the difference in threats over the internet
has to do with the annonymous identity that people assume and that people
can assume over the internet. It's quite different from having the face
to face contact, as you referred to above, when you go into a movie store
and rent some violent pornography. We can talk about that later

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:09) What is your response to Vicki Shultz's argument calling
for a change in the paradigm of sexual harassment law so as not to focus
on the sexual advances of the man to the woman, but concentrating instead
on the interference with a woman's ability to succeed in the workplace?
In what ways does this obscure the importance of the sanctity of a woman's
inner sexual privacy -- or does that idea in turn objectify women and put
us back into the white virgin cages of past centuries?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 15:11) From its inception, and throughout its development,
sexual harassment law has addressed eliminating this barrier to women's
success at work. Since there is a major body of case law that targets gender-specific
barriers to women's workplace advancement, including through gender harassment
whether or not sexual, the question is whether the problem Vicki Schultz
addresses in fact exists. I'm not sure I see what you're getting at in the
second sentence. Are you suggesting that Vicki Schultz's work ignores the
injury to "the sanctity of a woman's inner sexual privacy" but
that trying to protect that is regressive? I wouldn't call the right not
to be raped at work either about reinstituting a "white virgin cage"
or respecting "woman's inner sexual privacy." I'd call it not
having to be sexually violated to make a living. The opposite of that is
a hostile environment, and by the way, this example is Mechelle Vinson's
case, the one that established that cause of action, and she is African
American.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:15) In the best possible world, how would you regulate
pornography on the internet?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 15:17) Can we confine ourselves to the world we're in?
Pornography on the internet is no different from pornography anywhere else,
it just has a particular trajectory of access, as they all do. The civil
rights law Andrea Dworkin and I wrote, which would permit anyone who can
prove they are hurt in a number of specific ways through pornography, would
address the real harms of pornography on the internet, and everywhere else.
It can and should be passed in this world, which is neither the best nor
the only possible world.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:19) Does the internet pose special challenges to people
trying to fight against violence against women? Where should we concentrate
our efforts?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 15:20) The internet poses some interesting but small
and solveable problems of who can be held responsible for violations through
it as a medium. They are no different in kind from tracking down the pimps'
shell corporations, through which they shuffle to make their millions in
the regular pornography business and the other forms in which they traffic
in women and children. They are just specific to this medium. I think we
should concentrate our efforts on stopping pimps wherever anyone has access
to the means to stop them. People should concentrate their efforts ANYWHERE.
At the moment, there are almost no efforts, concentrated or otherwise, and
people do not intend to make them. In other words, for me, this is not an
academic question.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:23) Interesting points. The way you phrase it makes it
seem like the internet could actually be a really powerful tool to find
pornographers and pimps and prosecute them. The net makes great paper trails.
And, people seem to get sufficiently outraged when people use their work
computers to load child pornography, etc. Last year, the Dean of the Harvard
Divinity School was dismissed (or resigned gracefully) after it was found
that he had downloaded pornography from the internet.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:27) For the next question, what do you think of the Department
of Justice's declination to take the Jake Baker case up to the Supreeme
Court? Would a bad ruling on this case be worse than the 6th Circuit decision
standing? Do you think the Supreme Court would have perceived it as a threat?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 15:28) I think the Department of Justice was very wrong
not to petition for cert. in Jake Baker. There seems to be a notion that
what goes on in pornography is, by definition, fantasy, even when the threat
is real and realistic, and, if it was anything but sexual, would clearly
fall within the law prohibition threats. In fact, the Baker pornography
is a lot more clearly criminal under existing federal standards than a lot
of other things that HAVE been found by courts to be illegally threatening.
This notion that pornography is a law unto itself, an exception to every
law we have for everything else, is specially protected, violates women's
right to equal protection of the laws. I think it highly likely that the
Supreme Court would have found that what Jake Baker did had no First Amendment
protection. In its flight from the First Amendment, and ruling instead on
equally baseless statutory grounds, the 6th Circuit tacitly admitted as
much. The interesting question is why the Department of Justice caved. Their
prosecutors brought the case; their prosecutors appealed it. Why did what
was a threat then, cease to be a threat, when they had to hang their faces
out in front of a position that took seriously what the materials did to
women in front of the really big boys? Of course, a bad ruling by the Supreme
Court, would be worse than the Sixth Circuit decision standing, but not
by much, since no one will bring a case like this ever again probably now,
and I also don't think that it would have lost.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:35) Somehow it's encouraging to hear you say you think
we would have won. You did tremendous work on the case on behalf of the
plaintiff, Jane Doe. For those of you who don't know, Professor MacKinnon
represented the plaintiff, the young woman who was named in the violent
pornographic story by Baker. She wrote the amicus (friend of the court)
brief on behalf of the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault. You can
read it online at <www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/Porn/Baker/sc.html>. I
agree with you that it was inconsistent for the feds to consider the criminal
acts to constitute a threat at the trial court and the appeals court, but
not want to go all the way on it. My review of the threat law found no case
even close to as threatening as the Baker case. It was absolutely terrifying
to any woman who read it, not to mention how traumatizing it must have been
to the victim. The case also would have been a good one in which to illustrate
the harms of violent pornography. It was an extreme example -- I'm still
shocked that it got thrown out by the circuit and appeals courts. I wonder
if the case was brought now if the result would have been different now
that the internet proliferates our lives.

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:43) Here's a question from a student: What are you currently
working on for publication? For court? For fun?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at 15:43)
For publication, my project of the last 20 years, almost exclusively for
the last four years, is my legal casebook, Sex Equality. It's theoretical
and practical, comparative and international, but centers on U.S. law
on the status and relations of women and men. It will be about 1500 pages
of small type, most of it writing by me, also tightly edited case excerpts
and commentaries. I'm working on the chapter on Trafficking in Women now,
with two sections, the first Prostitution, the second Pornography. That's
the end!

Other articles about to come out are one on postmodernism in the Chicago-Kent
Symposium called "Unfinished Feminist Business," an irresistible title
(I mean, what feminist business is finished?); one on the problems of
class litigation in human rights cases drawn from my work with Bosnian
women, in Nova Law Review; and an opinion in Brown v. Board of Education
(merely 45 years too late!) for a book edited by Jack Balkin called What
Brown Should Have Said (he picks nine justices, we write our opinions,
it was a trip). I'm also writing something short on privacy that is really
about jurisdiction, that will be published in French.

Longer term, I'm putting together a 20 year collection of published and
unpublished work for Harvard University Press called Women's Lives, Men's
Laws, finishing a collection of essays on sexual harassment from a conference
a Yale a while back, and writing about the pornography of murder.

Court activities include my Bosnian litigation in New York, some confidential
things I wish I could talk about with you, some legislation in the same
category, and some potential litigation not yet filed in other countries
as well as here, same confidentiality; and endless advice to women litigants
who are being ignored or messed over by the legal system. Sorry I can't
tell you more. The problem is not only confidentiality but stigma as well
as security. Since the pornography work, I draw flies.

For fun, I'm imagining what life without this casebook might be like.
Really, I'm so buried under it, all I can do is shovel away in the salt
mines 14 hours a day. I look out of the window periodically. A really
big break is taking a shower. When it's done, everything will be fun.

Thanks for asking!

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:53) Oh my! You're completely amazing! And for those of
you out there, I can attest personally that the textbook will be fantastic
-- a real breakthrough. I'm looking forward to using it as my teaching materials
for whatever I teach next. I think the idea of Unfinished Feminist Business
is an interesting one. I think we've made so much progress, but then I sometimes
question how much of it is real. For example, orders of protection given
to domestic violence victims are engrained now in our legal system and our
expectations of how the system might help battered women. But we know that
these orders don't do a lot to protect battered women, so we clearly have
unfinished business in this regard.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 15:59) Bear with us, as we sift through the questions you
have sent! Thanks for all of your interesting and thought-provoking questions
and commetns! After Professor MacKinnon answers a few more questions, we
can stay on line here and chat with you all. So think of discussion questions!

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:02) Question from a student: What do you say to young
people who are not convinced that either sexual harassment or sexual assault
should concern them? These young people also seem to be unwilling to seriously
contemplate the social constructive aspect of gender in relationship to
these issues.

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at 16:03)
I'm afraid that all we really have to do is wait. If they haven't been
sexually abused yet, they will be, most of them. If that has happened
to them, and they are not convinced they should be concerned about it,
the problem with them is no different than it has always been with women.
Which is, taking their own oppression seriously. Which is one part believing
you are worth not being treated as you have been, and one part believing
that you can stop it. So really there are two answers to your question.
1. to those who haven't had this happen, either what happens to other
women matters to them or it doesn't, and if this hasn't happened, the
horrible truth is, it very likely will. and 2. to those who have had this
happen, you ARE worth more than what has been done to you, no matter how
it feels, and we CAN stop this. We really don't have much choice but to
try.

To your question about social construction, most people aren't willing
to look at why they think what they think. Only when they have a problem
they can't solve, or are unusually curious or self-reflective, do they.
Gender gives a lot of people, boys as well as girls, a lot of pain. Including
sexually. So they are motivated to find out why it has to be so narrow,
rigid, punitive, vicious, and violent. Finding themselves at odds with
society without an explanation is being up the creek without a paddle.
Seeing how society sets up this setup is a very big paddle.

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:09) Here is another student question: The United States,
while professing to be a pro-feminist nation, in actuality violates the
standard set by the international human rights community for the treatment
of women. More specifically, it is my belief that while many other countries
may continue to harbor practices detrimental to women (FGM, etc.), many
positive steps have at least been taken by the international legal community
to address these practices. Quite the opposite, the US continues to rest
on a reputation of being pro-women rights, yet we continue to possess archaic
laws that do not allow for the prosecution of rape, DV, etc.

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:12) This is totally right and perceptive. Pornography,
for example, is a traditional cultural practice that mutilates at least
as many women in the US as other practices that we profess to find shocking,
shocking elsewhere. And it's a constitutional right. Also, the US floods
the world with pornography, a major form of cultural imperialism, into the
open arms of men in other countries, violating women there in ways that
violate their human rights. And all the cultural relativists defend it.
The United States doesn't even adopt most of the international conventions
that would make it possible to have the US live up to international standards
HERE, while posturing virtuously over everyone else.

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:15) Here is another question from one of our teaching
fellows. I have heard as a criticism of the legislation against porn written
by you and Dworkin that it is dangerous because it would probably be most
successfully used against feminist writings (they would be the first to
be attacked) and because we would be joining forces with and adding power
to the religious right, who would also like to get rid of porn, although
for different reasons. What do you think?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:17) Joanna: this is a PR canard spread by the pornographers
to scare liberals and people who don't know how law works. The religious
right has never supported the law Andrea Dworkin and I wrote. It is a sex
equality law. Sex equality is not high on their agenda. you may have noticed;
they have notived; the lemmings who publish what PR firms give them seem
not to have noticed. I suspect that the ACLU would make sure that feminist
writings like In Harm's Way, the Pornography Civil Rights Hearings with
very explicit testimony about abuse through pornography, edited by Andrea
Dworkin and me and published by the Harvard University Press (after 15 years
of suppression by publishers), were sued immediately under our law. They
would have to make that prophesy come true. But the fact is, that material
doesn't get anyone raped, it doesn't subordinate anyone, so it is not covered
by the law. It would be a nuisance suit. The definition of pornography requires
that the materials actually SUBORDINATE women (or whoever) to be actionable.
They could not prove that these feminist materials do that. That doesn't
mean that materials can't be pornography and also purport to be feminist,
but that's another subject. The pimps spent over a million dollars one year
to get everyone to think what you asked about. Also, the religious right,
I don't think actually wants to get rid of pornography. They have a lot
of power. They could, if they wanted to. I think that they, indistinguishably
from other male-dominated groups, use it, want it, and like it. Unlike other
male-dominated groups, they just want to SAY how much they hate it in public.
It's all posturing.

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:24) Here is the final student question: Has anyone considered
the Baker case to fall in the category of "Hate Crimes Against Women"?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at 16:25)
I think it does. Pornography is misogynst to the core. It's hard to make
it clear to people that what they think of as being love is actually hatred,
but hostility to one's human status is hateful.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:26) AMEN! It's been such a battle to get people to understand
gender based violence as having to do with hate when it seems to be so deeply
engrained in "intimate" partner relationships. Now, one more question
from teaching fellow Claire Prestel.

<MelissaBaily> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:28) Here is the question: Professor MacKinnon, do you
worry about the quality of support systems and networks on the internet?
I found when doing research for this course that there are really a lot
of sub-par materials out there on the web, things that might contribute
to the dearth of quality woman-focused media. The article in the NY Times
magazine, Wasteland of One's Own,, talks about some of the problems with
mass-market woman-directed media. It's all about lipstick, etc. and even
when it's not, I feel a lot of the web sites I looked at encourage stereotypes
about women as the only caring sensitive ones; women care about each other
and about people but men don't/can't, etc.

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:31) Claire: Sure there's a lot of junk on the net,
but the amazing thing about it is that it's unedited. I think the dearth
of quality in woman-focused media is about underestimating the audience
and requiring that power be sucked up to before money is laid out. The net
doesn't need to be run by money, and doesn't have to underestimate the audience
either. i recommend the websites set up by the activist Nikki Craft under
various acronyms including Always Causing Legal Unrest (ACLU), which are
very high quality. The net is a place where we CAN do alternative speech,
unlike all the other places controlled by power where more speech is fallacy
and a palliative.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:34) Okay, here's my last question... What do you think
about the term "postfeminism"? Does it annoy you as much as it
does me?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:35) We went from prefeminist to postfeminist so fast
it makes my head swim. This is just a gambit to locate things in time in
such a way that we never get change. It used to be what we wanted was unprecedented
and so far ahead of the curve that no one could understand it. Now it's
passe. WHEN was the time when these same people were FOR it? When we GOT
what we're supposed to be past? I'll be postfeminist in postpatriarchy.

<Chark> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:36) clapping :)

<pgb> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:36) APPLAUSE

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:37) Okay, a couple very quick ones. Here's a follow up
question: Given what Prof. MacKinnon has just said about all the work she's
doing and how daunting it can seem, how does she keep going? Especially
when everyone else seems to think all feminist business really is 'finished.'
It's hard sometimes to always feel like your fighting an irresistable tide.
How does she do it so well and tirelessly!

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:38) I don't know if anyone honestly knows the answer
to this question about themselves, but I do know some things that make a
difference for me. Hearing from women that the work matters in their lives
gives me back something that makes it possible to keep going. Also, working
with survivors, people who don't lie about what was done to them and what
it took from them, make it impossible to stop. I think people put a lot
of energy into stopping feelings that are unpleasant and uncomfortable for
them. I don't. I feel them. I learn. Then I do something about it. Denial
is exhausting. Not doing it gives one a tremendous amount of energy. I recommend
it.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:40) Again, you are an absolute inpiration to this world.
The last question, really, though we could go on, is: Speaking of the Supreme
Court, what are your comments on the Brzonkala case? Specifically, what
political action would you recommend if the civil right to be free from
gender motivated violence is stricken down?

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:42) Brzonkala is our civil war. It's where we fight
over our place in the union, and our status in civil society. If we lose,
we have to think seriously about what to do. I think we are going to win.

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:43) Thank you so much for your time. We so appreciate
your efforts and your insights are, as always, inspirational. Thanks to
all of the student and teaching fellow participants. Without your comments,
questions and feedback, this would not have been possible. We hope that
you got a lot out of this educational experience.

<CatharineMacKinnon> (Tue, March
21, 2000 at 16:45) I greatly appreciate the quality of the exchange
and I look forward to continuing it in other ways.

<pgb> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:46) Clappnig while rushing to leave to pick up child ... and thanks
also to Prof. Rosenfeld and teaching fellows.

<jackrosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:46) You (C.M.) have to copyright "Postfeminist in PostPatriarchy"-
it says so much about where our focus is and where it should be.

<Jackie> (Tue, March 21, 2000
at 16:47) Yes... thank you!

<Chark> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:47) Thank you all for this wonderful experience , the first of
its kind :)

<DianeRosenfeld> (Tue, March 21,
2000 at 16:47) The transcript of this session willbe posted and available
through out series site. Also, some answers to other questions will be answered
and posted.

<SRyan> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:47) Oh, that's great, I missed the first part. Thank you

<Jackie> (Tue, March 21, 2000
at 16:41) Keep up the WONDERFUL work!

<pgb> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:41) get a web site

<SRyan> (Tue, March 21, 2000 at
16:44) This was great! Thanks

Additional Answers
to Student Questions

Question. Due to the recent laws for equal pay for women, how is this
really going to happen? We women still make .75 to every $1 a man makes, especially
in the Information Technology arena. What are the pro's and con's of this new
law...

MacKinnon. Tina: If they took the money they plan to spend on this initiative
and spread it around to all the women who make the least money, it would do
more for women's income than what the program is going to do. Look, until they
deal with the fact that women are not paid equally for work in "women's jobs,"
which most women are doing, work that creates just as much value as "men's jobs,"
the problem of equal pay is going nowhere. Other places that have instituted
comparable worth laws have raised women's pay dramatically, REALLY dramatically.
Anything else is window dressing. Also, their figure of 75 cents is not realistic
for most women, who make a lot less than that on the male dollar. Also, the
real value of the male dollar has dropped, so women's comparative share of a
shrinking real value has improved, but that doesn't mean they are getting any
more, the men they are being compared with are just getting less.

Question. I happened to read a new excerpts from a new book about the
biological history of RAPE. Do you think there is any validity to the thesis
that rape is biologically-based behavior, and can be best countered by chemical
castration?

MacKinnon. No, I don't. I think it is factually wrong and results in
counterproductive and inhuman responses. It plays off the social ideology that
male sexuality is uncontrollable, which it isn't. Many men manage to control
themselves and have nothing wrong with their testosterone and are not underevolved.
I'll go further. I think that the reason people argue that rape is biological
is because of the social ideology that sexual behavior is biological. Which
I also think is factually wrong. If it's for biological reproduction, I don't
know what all this sexual abuse of children, use of prostitutes, homosexuality,
and use of pornography are about. None of that is intended to spread anyone's
gene pool, and most of it can't. (The foregoing is not a moral list: I'm FOR
homosexuality, and against the other things on that list. It's an empirical
list.) Chemical castration has been tried on child molesters; there may be work
I haven't seen, but from what I have seen, it doesn't work. They just use bottles.
This idea that the problem of rape has something to do with the male body is
vicious and sexist; at best, it puts all the blame on the wrong body part. I'm
afraid we are going to have to deal with how the entire society sexualizes power,
makes forcing sex on someone with less power sexy. Bodies are simple. That's
difficult.